The Power Of Leading By Influence

Wednesday 18 February, 2009

by Harry Wolfe

Improved leadership standards increase productivity, and an organisation's ability to manage change. Organisations have many 'position descriptions' of leadership. All describe leadership outputs. How can we specify the leadership inputs of influence that motivate increased productivity, and the ability to manage change?

Leadership has only two sources of power:

1. Power of position
   
   Leadership dependent on the power of position, inhibits initiative and communications, increases stress and staff turnover. Leaders dependent on the power of position, are plainly unsuited to deal with, and lead, change. Such leadership is typified by:
   
   
   • Responding only to their own expectations and requirements
     
   • Rely on the power of their relationships or precedent to achieve their objectives
     
   • Have one leadership style only
     
   • Finds and delegates problems - but takes no responsibility for their process, or outcome
     
2. Power by influence
   
   Leaders, who use the power of influence:
   
   • Are broadminded with people, tasks, relationships and situations
     
   • Manage their stress
     
   • Actively listen to criticism without pre-judgement
     
   • Motivate other people
     
   • Clarify situations and communications
     
   • Encourage job satisfaction
     
   • Reduce stress
     
   • Increase staff retention

We live in a world of increasing change that demands leaders be able to anticipate the future, see beyond the established, accepted and approved way of doing things, to what can be ... what might be ... what should be. 
Leaders with good communication skills and the power to influence others are very effective in a world of change, as they foresee, plan and deal with many things at the same time, motivate a wide range of different personalities, encourage other's leadership abilities, to the advantage - and profit - of everyone.

Leadership specification

There are myriad descriptions of a good leader.  A typical description is:

• Sets challenging, achievable goals for others
  
• Measures, reviews other's work performance against clear standards and expectations
  
• Provides regular feedback to others on work performance
  
• Recognises excellent performance, and deals promptly with performance problems

These leadership specifications fail on just one single, critical, point. They describe leadership outputs not inputs!  If a person's leadership inputs are not correct, then how can their leadership outputs possibly be correct?
Organisations and businesses specify the inputs to their administration procedures that achieve their administration output objectives; they specify the input ingredients, processes and skills to produce their service, or product. But none specify, or benchmark, the intangible inputs of leadership needed to achieve their organisation's leadership objective.

Leadership founded on influence

Your character is formed by the output, and interactions, of your temperament, attitudes of feelings, emotions, thinking, beliefs and values, and is seen by others in your behaviour. 
Your character determines your leadership.
However your character alone is not enough to make you a successful leader. In the real world your character is only half of your leadership equation. The other half is decided by your awareness and recognition of other people's attitudes, and your ability to instantly adopt the strategy and tactics that most effectively influence the attitude, and behaviour of other people.
You ask: "What is so important in recognising another person's attitude and character to my success as a leader? Have they not ears to hear, eyes to see, minds to understand how I want them to think and behave, and just get on with achieving the objective I set?"
The answer lies in the fact that behaviour is the result of motivation. Feelings and emotions alone motivate behaviour. Feelings, and emotions, that are inextricably entwined in a person's beliefs and values, as attitude. Those beliefs and values of attitude are the gatekeepers to that person's mind. Those beliefs and values determine what information is allowed to enter that person's mind, to motivate and decide their behaviour.
It follows therefore that if your leadership is to motivate other people to be equally committed to achieving the objective as you are, you must:

• Adopt their attitude of thinking and behaviours towards your objective, to ensure your leadership is allowed to enter their mind to motivate and decide their behaviour
  
• Develop their trust in you, and understanding of your objective, by communicating with them on their frequency of situationally changing attitude, beliefs and values, to ensure the information exchanged is allowed to enter and influence each of your minds, and mutually motivate and decide each other's behaviour

Source:ceoonline.com